White supremacists storm Charlottesville, Virginia for the second day in a row for a “Unite the Right” rally organized primarily on Discord servers and social media. This time, counterprotesters meet them.
One supremacist runs counterprotesters over with a car, killing one counterprotester and injuring 19 others.
On the morning of August 12, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, stating that public safety could not be safeguarded without additional powers. Within an hour, at 11:22 a.m., the Virginia State Police declared the rally to be an unlawful assembly. At around 1:45 p.m., self-identified white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) away from the rally site, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 other people.
Wikipedia
The Unite the Right marchers self-identified individually as alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and as members of militia groups.
On August 15, Donald Trump refuses to condemn the white supremacy defenders, saying there are “very fine people on both sides.”
“Sadly, the president botched his response, and it became much more about what the president said and how he botched it than it was about what just happened,” [Homeland Security official Elizabeth] Neumann lamented. “This is not the America we know. We all had this collective, ‘What in the world? How is this happening in 2017?’”
Politico
In May 2019, one of the groups involved — RAM a.k.a. Rise Above Movement — pleads guilty to planning violent assaults on counterprotesters in Charlottesville and at other rallies.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/26/trump-domestic-extemism-homeland-security-401926
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-charlottesville-transcript-20170815-story.html
https://www.modbee.com/news/article167213427.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/neo-confederate-league-of-the-south-banned-from-protesting-in-charlottesville
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-40914748
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/state-emergency-charlottesville-va-fights-erupt-white-nationalist-rally
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2017/08/13/heres-what-a-neo-nazi-rally-looks-like-in-2017-america/
https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/11/us/charlottesville-white-nationalists-rally-why/index.html
https://www.nbc29.com/story/38204693/settlements-from-unite-the-right-05-16-2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/accused-serial-rioters-plead-guilty-in-charlottesville-racist-mayhem/2019/05/03/1fad4848-6dbd-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html
https://www.wired.com/story/leaked-alt-right-chat-logs-are-key-to-charlottesville-lawsuits/
Photo: depthandtime
